Who's Hungry? And How Do We Know? Food Shortage, Poverty and Deprivation (UNU, 1998, 199 pages)

6. Conflict as a cause of hunger

(introductory text...)

Food shortage related to conflict

Food poverty related to conflict

Distribution of conflict-related food poverty

Food deprivation related to conflict

The hunger costs of sanctions

Underlying conditions

Humanitarian and political principles and institutions limiting conflict-related hunger

Measuring the ''hunger'' costs of conflict

Conclusions

Notes

Works cited

Food deprivation related to conflict

Even where food resources are available from domestic or external
(relief) sources, access is selective. As already noted in the case of Sudan,
governments selectively deny access to opposition groups, and opposition leaders
reciprocate by denying food to government-controlled forces and towns, where
possible. In addition, certain members of households and communities have less
access to regular food sources or emergency rations because they are relatively
powerless as a result of their age or gender status. These include women,
children, and the elderly, who are the most frequent victims of hunger in food
wars, because they are left behind when active males migrate in search of food
or are commandeered into military service where they are fed. Women often are
forced to give up local assets (land, seeds), go without extra labour
(especially of absent males), suffer lack of protection (against violence, as
local community moral and social structures are destroyed), and enjoy less
health care. Both women and children suffer disproportionately from illness,
where malnutrition and destruction of healthcare services render them more
vulnerable, especially if, in the end, they are forced to flee in search of
survival.

Children lose access to material and social resources at all
social levels and are therefore more at risk of malnutrition, illness, and
death. The most immediate and dramatic victims of hunger and war tend to be
children, who die in great numbers of malnutrition-related illness; in Somalia
in 1992, some estimate that up to 90 per cent of children under five died. It is
a truism that governments at war invest fewer resources in child welfare: they
favour military expenditures, and international assistance and investment
(especially under conflict conditions) do not make up the deficit. UNICEF
attempted to measure these investments by assessing which countries are least
likely to meet World Summit for Children goals for improved child survival by
the end of the decade. In their sample, those least likely to meet them are all
"countries currently or recently affected by war or internal strife: Angola,
Burundi, Haiti, Lesotho, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Zaire"
(Mason et al. 1996).

War-related refugee and displaced persons who have fled to
situations that lack sanitation, water, and health services are especially
susceptible to respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders that threaten lives
(Winter 1995). Children are, in addition, exceptionally vulnerable to
micronutrient deficiencies that generally characterize emergency food rations,
which supply predominantly calories through cereals, legumes, and edible oils.
Women are special victims of both violence and hunger in refugee settings, where
male thugs often control distribution of emergency rations.

Everyone is rendered more vulnerable to malnutrition as a result
of higher levels of illness, a by-product of the deliberate or accidental
destruction of health services and underinvestment in health programmes that
accompanies war. The most vulnerable members of society are also more at risk of
hunger as a result of underinvestments in food security and development because
of relatively high military or defence expenditures. In most cases of conflict,
the longer-term economic and fiscal burden of war appears far more costly in
terms of human lives than is direct killing (Macrae and Zwi
1994).